album rock

When I was thirteen, I brought along with me on a weeklong family vacation to Texas a single album: Avril Lavigne’s seminal Let Go, featuring cultural touchstones like “Sk8r Boi” and “Nobody’s Fool” (actual lyric: “I’m not the milk and Cheerios in your spoon”). For seven days, I listened to Let Go on repeat. Nobody…More

everyone’s a little bit basic

Pumpkin Spice Latte. Mimosa brunch. Sex and the City. Hear that? That’s the sound of 500 followers running for higher-brow ground. Can you blame them? No self-respecting intellectually competent young adult wants to be caught associating with someone who’s—dare I say it?—basic. There was a time, not so long ago, when a young woman in…More

gunner

I signed up for a French class a couple weeks ago. It’s the first time I’ve set foot in a classroom since I graduated from college some three and a half (!) years ago. It’s entirely for fun—not for work, not even for a grade—and yet every time I enter the classroom, I feel myself…More

baby’s first breakup

prologue It begins with a breakup that takes all night. Is this normal? I’m not sure. This is my first breakup, because this was my first relationship (sorry, high school boyfriends, but you don’t count. I still treasure the poems I wrote about missing looking at your dirty Converse sneakers under the table during biology…More

calculus for nomads

The nomad’s life is exhausting—not to mention expensive, and at a certain point, people start to think you’re a little nuts—and I needed a more reliable method of determining my next move. So I wrote a formula: an algorithm based in reliable science and not at all on anecdotal evidence based on a sample size of one, designed to guarantee my happiness on the next perch where I alight.More

idiot box

I was five before anyone noticed that I couldn’t see past my own feet. In hindsight, much of my peculiar behavior up to that point could be chalked up to my near-blindness: the way I stared at the ground when I walked and held books inches from my face to read them and how I…More

whenever this world is cruel to me

When I was thirteen, my best friend found a new best friend. After five blissful years connected at the hip—it was a rare weekend that didn’t start at one of our houses and end at the other’s—it had become clear that we were no longer appendages of the same person. It was painful, to be…More

the %$*(ing weather

“Your family is weirdly obsessed with the weather.” I have been told this on more than one occasion. I would be offended if it weren’t true: we are, in fact, weirdly obsessed with the weather. No Cass-to-Cass conversation lacks a comprehensive discussion of the current and historic weather in every location we’ve been or could…More

whine and cheese

When I was six or seven, my parents put a jar on the kitchen counter and informed me that I had to put a dime in it every time I said the phrase “no fair.” At this point, I had been verbal for about five or six years, and while my first words were probably…More

“we”

I enjoy not having a tapeworm. (Granted, I would spend a lot less of my life grunting on a spin bike if I had a tapeworm, but I’m told there are some unpleasant side effects that aren’t worth the calorie burn.) I also enjoy not being royalty, in no small part because I really like…More